There are still plenty of Coloradans who remember the ravages of the polio epidemic that swept the nation some 60 years ago. It was a frightening and tragic time. Of the 57,628 cases reported throughout the U.S. in 1952, the worst year of the epidemic, 3,145 people, mostly children and teens, died. Another 21,269 were left with mild to disabling paralysis. Families were torn asunder as stricken children were quarantined. Parents were terrified their children would be next to be blindsided by this insidious killer.

It was the development of the polio vaccine by researchers Jonas Salk and Albert Sabin that turned the corner in our fight against polio. Mass immunizations using a vaccine pioneered by Salk were in full swing by 1957, and the incidence of polio dropped dramatically to just 5,600 cases that year from a peak of nearly 58,000 case just a few years earlier. With the subsequent introduction of Sabin’s orally administered polio vaccine, the nation’s recovery from the nightmare of polio was nearly complete. By 1961, there were only 161 new cases of polio recorded in the U.S., and the disease has been all but eradicated by the 1970s.

In fact, I was one of those children whose parents worried with every cold if I was going to suffer the paralysis of polio. I still remember the relief when my family was able to be immunized against this and other childhood diseases.

The timely introduction of the polio vaccines also had another effect on our society: It educated Americans about the need to immunize their children against disease. Many came to realize their decisions about immunizations were very much a life-and-death matter.

And yet, today, there are still too many households where children are not getting their immunizations — across the country and right here in Colorado. Indeed, Colorado continues to have one of the nation’s lower immunization rates, and that should trouble us all.

To be sure, some parents have sincere — though, arguably, unfounded — objections to immunization. Yet, many others simply seem unaware of the dangers their children face. And in yet other households, the failure to immunize is part of a broader pattern of neglect of children’s health care due to a variety of social and economic factors. All told, too many of our children are attending school unprotected against disease — and are putting others at risk.

Colorado’s General Assembly has acknowledged this troubling reality and took an important step this spring toward improving our state’s record. It passed House Bill 1288, which raises the standards for qualifying for an exemption from the standard childhood immunizations before a child can be enrolled in school.

Significantly, the legislation, which was signed into law in May by Gov. John Hickenlooper, also requires every school in Colorado to make the immunization rate of its students publicly available upon request. Parents have a right to know how well their own children will be safeguarded from debilitating and even fatal diseases when they attend school.

Certainly, parents and guardians with reservations about immunization must have their concerns addressed, and those who still object must be respected. It is only reasonable to require, though, as HB 1288 does, that those who enroll unimmunized children under the state’s personal-belief exemption first document that they have been apprised in writing of the risks and benefits of immunization.

And it also is reasonable to expect public institutions like our schools to fully and publicly disclose their immunization rates so we know the potential dangers to which our children are exposed. HB 1288 accomplishes that. It is a significant stride toward greater accountability in public health.

We know what an epidemic like polio can do, and we know what immunization can do to prevent it. Let’s learn from history—for the sake of our children.

Dr. Rick Budensiek is a family physician in Greeley and is president of the Colorado Academy of Family Physicians.